The Feminine Playbook: Art of Power
What happens when you stop chasing and start playing? Hold power instead of surrendering to it?
Just as men fall into archetypes, women, too, embody patterns in love and seduction. But unlike men, we are not given the luxury of a singular role.
In my many conversations with my dad on boys (sorry, Gary), he would roll his eyes in exasperation, claiming, “Women need to realize they are the ones in control.”
I didn’t believe him. As much as I want this to be true, considering gender roles throughout the ages, I can’t get myself to picture it. If we held power, why had history been written by men?
But could this be the case?
Pick Your Poison
On the surface, men have always held institutional power, but beneath that, women have often been the invisible hands shaping decisions.
Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes shows raw, calculated dominance. Judith, delicate yet resolute, wields the blade herself. She plays the part of a seductress just long enough to get close— then strikes, beheading her enemy.
Through seduction, intelligence, emotional manipulation, etc. – women influenced the influential, puppeteering the master.
History remembers kings. But look closer, and you’ll see the women who moved them like chess pieces.
For Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII– not only did she seduce her way into monarchical power, but she made him destroy his kingdom for her. In her refusal to become his mistress in his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, he, consumed with obsession, divorced his wife and attempted to make Anne his queen.
Even in Ancient Rome, with Agrippina the Younger and Emperor Claudius, women learned how to hone their charm and skill to play the game. Great-granddaughter of Augustus and sister of Caligula, Agrippina became the most powerful woman in the empire in her marriage to Ekperor Claudius. Pushing for Nero, her son, to assume absolute control, she poisoned her husband and ensured his throne.
Cleopatra famously seduced two empires. A political mastermind and strategist, she manipulated Rome’s two most powerful men, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Cleopatra, with Caesar entranced by her, restored her place as Queen. After his murder, she moved to Mark Antony. With his found favor, she was granted power over Roman territories alongside her domain.
To know how to capture a man’s ego is the highest form of control. But what happens when the game is over? When you lose yourself within it?
Archetypal Matches
Romance is often framed as a game of choice— are you the heartbreaker or the heartbroken? The chased or the chaser? Sometimes, power belongs to those who become what the moment requires.
1— The Enchantress
Appearing when faced with The Player— the man who loves the chase but fears the catch— the only way to win against him is to make sure he never truly has her. She feeds his desire for Cat and Mouse without fully satisfying it.
She doesn’t try to make him stay. In doing so, she becomes the only one who doesn’t ask for anything—- the one he can’t shake.
— But she cannot need him. The moment she does, she loses. She must be as unattainable as he is.
He doesn’t want a sure thing, he wants the chase. If she gives in too soon, she becomes just another conquest.
The Player will never commit out of pressure or obligation. To make him believe he is the one choosing, claiming her– he will not feel forced to commit, but lucky to.
2— The Illusionist
With The Dream Seller— the man who makes promises just to break them— she must weave a fantasy more intoxicating than his own.
She makes him believe that he’s found his soulmate, that their love is rare, fated. If she wants to be irreplaceable, she must be unexpected, surprising him before he fully understands her.
When he starts to pull away, it’s not because he doesn’t want her— it’s because he’s chasing a new dream, a new high. He’s addicted to potential, not permanence.
The Illusionist already planned for this. Doesn’t beg. Doesn’t chase. No late-night texts. His ego tells him she must still be thinking of him, but deep down, he isn’t sure.
She ensures she is never a finished story in his mind. She leaves him with an unresolved feeling, a question: "Did I let go of something I never fully had? Did I abandon this too early?”
— But winning lies in her ability to remain detached. To lose is to stop playing him and start waiting for him.
3— The Devoted
To The Nice Guy, she needs devotion. She becomes everything he’s ever wanted.
He doesn’t play games. So why does it so often go wrong? Why do the women who devote themselves completely still end up alone?
The Nice Guy believes he’s different. But the truth? He’s just as susceptible to the chase.
She must make him feel like choosing her is a triumph, not a given. If she is always available, always giving, he may not see her value. If she asks for nothing, he may assume she has nothing to lose.
Challenge him emotionally. Not by withholding love, but by ensuring it remains dynamic. By making him work, not for affection, but for time. Sometimes, say no just because. Cancel a date and reschedule. Let him miss you instead of always being available.
Go M.I.A. for a night because you’re distracted and having fun elsewhere. Be fully present when you’re with him, but when you’re not, disappear a little.
When he realizes he’s not her whole world, it makes him want to earn more space in it.
The Dilemma
Writing these out, even I wonder if we have lost our human ability to simply love someone, to care for them. Why do we play games? For the unsatisfying feat of modern apathy, of unstable attention?
When the game has finished— when the man is “won” or “lost”— what remains of self? If romance is a stage, love a performance, then where does the actress end and you begin?
Modern love is shaped by options, by overstimulation, by the fear of choosing wrong.
We have always played. In every era, in every romance. The difference is that now, we acknowledge it.
If the performance is the only thing holding love together, it’s theater. But if the roles were only a means to spark intrigue, to create momentum, then what remains is something real.
It requires both people to see each other beyond the game. To want to.
Attraction thrives on mystery, but those who crave something deeper will see that love is in the moment you finally take off the mask and are still chosen anyway.
If We Are Everything, Are We Anything?
The power to be everything is intoxicating. To be the fantasy, the mystery, feels like control.
Yet, if I have spent my life becoming what others need, do I even know what I need?
Judith, after beheading Holofernes, walks away victorious. But does she ever shed her blood-stained image? Cleopatra played the lover, the queen, the goddess. But in the end, was there ever a moment when she could just exist for herself?
Perhaps it is not in who we become for men, but realizing we never needed to become anything at all. Not about whether we play the game, but knowing we never had to.
Not to lose oneself because men “need” us to, but shifting because we choose when, how, and if we play at all.
Cleopatra did not seduce Caesar and Antony because she was desperate for love—she did it to secure a throne. Anne Boleyn did not hold out for Henry VIII’s obsession simply to be adored—she did it to wear a crown. Even Judith did not seduce Holofernes for the thrill of conquest—she did it to save her people.
Archetypes are not masks to be worn for the pleasure of men, but tools to wield in serving us. We are not merely reacting to men; we are deciding if we engage at all.
Inspired Reading:
‘The Art of Seduction’— Robert Greene
‘Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome’— Guy de la Bédoyère
‘The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World’— Daisy Dunn
